Everlark Through The Ages (Project Genius Hour)
by Annabeth-TheTributeThatLived
Summary: Take a look at how Katniss and Peeta's relationship developed from birth to post Mockingjay (pre epilogue.) Each chapter marks the beginning of the next year. Rated T for eventual mentions of abuse, neglect and death. On hiatus.
1. Birth

**A/N: This is actually mandatory schoolwork. From now on, I can only work on this every Friday, so I won't be taking any time out of my main story. Also, this is just the prologue, and since they're babies/toddlers, the chapters are going to be short until they turn 5. Now, I present to you Everlark Through the Ages!**

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><p>She was born in the early morning of May 8th. Her coarse dark hair was the only indication of the gray eyes to come. She would take after her father. Her mother was upset; she wanted a girl to look like her. Her father promised next time they would have a blonde.<p>

Her mother cherished the blue eyes the girl was born with, and prayed they wouldn't fade to gray. Even with the dark hair, there was a chance at having her mother's eyes; the clear blue ones that indicated wealth and high class. Those aspects of her life were but a distant memory and she needed the sapphire colored eyes to keep her grounded.

Her mother insisted that the father named her. He took pride in being the one to choose, and he wanted to give the girl the perfect name. She went weeks without a name; the parents tried out many, but none seemed to fit their daughter. Caitlin was too plain, Isabel too frail, and Demi too extravagant. After a month, her father proclaimed that her name would be Katniss. He would raise her to be an archer, and to shoot the arrows that so resembled the leaves on the plant of her namesake.

Katniss was close to her father from the very beginning. It was him that sang her lullabies, because it was his voice that soothed her. During the grueling shift of the coal mines, she would cry for hours on end, despite her mother's futile attempts to calm her. The tears were always gone as quickly as they came as soon as her small ears detected the sound of the door creaking open and her father's work boots.

Katniss's mother was always upset that she couldn't be the one to keep her daughter happy. What kind of mother was she that she couldn't even get her own baby to stop crying? Her father swelled with pride every time he was able to stop the girl's crying. He never thought he was good with children, and despite the poverty, his interactions with Katniss only made him want to have more children.

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><p>He was an accident. His parents never wanted three boys; how could they afford a family of five on a baker's salary? His mother took an immediate disliking to him, claiming that she was too old to have had another child, and this one would grow up demented. His father was his number one fan. He knew that this child would be the last and was determined to hold onto the baby boy for as long as he could.<p>

There was a tradition in the Mellark family that the new baby would be named for the bread the mother loved most during pregnancy. The eldest of the boys was Wheet and the middle child was Rhye. The youngest child was to be named Peeta, after his mother ate the flatbread with jams.

Peeta took an immediate interests in the colors of the world. He often smeared his mashed foods around the table, mixing different colors and getting it in his fine blond hair. He irritated his mother to no end. She claimed it was because he was wasting food, but his father knew that is was just because she didn't like having to clean up after the child. He always tried to intercept the messes before his mother could find them.

Peeta had a fascination with fire. When his parents had nothing better to do with him, they would set him on the floor in front of the oven. The firelight danced in his wide eyes, and he sat there simply observing for hours on end. The oven is where he would be brought whenever he couldn't be consoled otherwise, and his father would always marvel at the seemingly instantaneous change in his demeanor once the coals were lit. His mother thought it was a waste of resources.

All his mother cared about was the financial aspects of having a third child. To her, Wheet was the smart one, Rhye the athletic one, and Peeta the unnecessary mouth to feed. Mrs. Mellark often didn't make the baby food for Peeta, and only made food for four, blaming it on force of habit. On these days, her husband wordlessly rose from his seat and prepared the food for Peeta. Mrs. Mellark could not get rid of Peeta, at least not easily.

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><p><strong>AN: Updates should come about once a week. Remember to review, and check out my other stories.**


	2. Age 2

**A/N: I'm back *dances***

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><p>He was a mild mannered, well behaved child. When he was two, Rhye was five and Wheet was seven, and his brothers yearned for the days that their brother was old enough to play roughly with. Until then, all of his time was spent with his father.<p>

Every payday, the first and third Thursday in each month, Mr. Mellark put aside some money for something for he and Peeta to share. After a few weeks, the man had saved enough to afford what he wanted, and unbeknownst to his wife, he set out for finger paints.

For hours on end, the man would sit with his child at the counter and smear paint on cardboard using their fingers. They always planned these days when Peeta's mother was out of the house, whether it was shopping for bread ingredients or getting her hair done. Mrs. Mellark seemed to always be out of the house, presumedly to keep away from the family.

Peeta loved to paint flowers. He would fashion a messy circle of yellow surrounded by various sloppy finger prints in blue and orange. He would hold it up proudly for his father to see, but he never showed his mother. She would be upset at the waste of money.

Peeta's father also liked to paint flowers, but they were different from his son's. The man's flower's were always purple and white, encircling lumps of coal. When Peeta asked his father about the pictures, he never got a straight answer; just mutterings of katniss flowers and coal miners.

On the days that Peeta's mother was home, the father and son would paint frosting on to sugar cookie sheets. This was the only time the woman was ever happy; free labor delighted her.

The age if two was also when Mrs. Mellark found it acceptable to invict her own form of punishment on the boy. On Peeta's brothers, the punishments were more severe, because they were "supposed to be role models" and "they knew better." They would get beaten with rolling pins and wooden spoons. Peeta was often slapped.

Mrs. Mellark always used the same excuses. He fell out of his high chair. Wheet threw a ball at him. He burned himself on the stove. Their father always knew about the abuse, but he never brought it up, because he didn't want to get hurt himself.

It wouldn't have been the first time a woman he thought he loved hurt him.

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><p>She had a special place in her parents' hearts. She was a happy child from the moment of her first smile. Once she got over her need for her father and only her father, she warmed up to her mother. During her father's coal mining hours, Kathis's would sit propped up against a metal pan chewing mint leaves while her mother prepared remedies or worked on patients.<p>

Katniss never liked to watch the procedures. Blood and vomit terrified her, and she would often put her small head in the metal pot she was sitting by when the gore became too graphic. Whenever her mother was working on starving children, she watched intently, head cocked, thumb in mouth.

It fascinated her that a child's moans and cries could be easily silenced by no more than a piece of squirrel or wild strawberries. She wouldn't know until she was older the extreme chances her father was taking to obtain the necessary items for the people of the District.

Above all, Katniss at the age of two was a sort of solace to pregnant women who were unsure of having their babies. The frantic mothers-to-be that were sure they were making a mistake would take a look at Katniss, smiling and happy, even in her poor living conditions and be reassured that this was what they wanted.

Mr. Everdeen was greatful every day that his wife worked from home. If they both worked in the mines, what would they do with Katniss? She was too young to be left alone, and with the scarcity of food, not many people would be able to take on an extra child for eight to twelve hours a day.

The best was when Katniss's father came home. He would purposefully open the door slowly, letting it creek, putting just the tip of his boot through the doorframe. The toddler would bound to the door, twin braids flying behind her chanting "Daddy's home!"

Her father would lift her up high in the air and spin her around, while she smiled broadly and buried her face in his shoulder. He flew her around over his head so she could pretend to be a hovercraft. Katniss would blow raspberries into the air, and her mother would smile and roll her eyes, wiping her hands on her apron after washing the day's dishes.

Dinner was the chance for the family to catch up. Mr. Everdeen went hunting after work every day, bringing home a squirrel or two for the family to have, along with some greens and even strawberries if they were in season. He would entrap his daughter' smiled with his dramatic descriptions of the blazing fires deep in the underground, and sometimes even brought out a particularly pretty rock for Katniss to behold. Soon, the toddler had a collection.

Since she was blissfully ignorant about what really happened in the mines, Katniss saw them as some sort of distant fairyland where sparks flew, and pretty rocks littered the ground, free for the taking. Compared to the fantastical world she created below the earth, her mother's apothecary job was bland and useless. She always told her father that she wanted to be just like him, and he didn't have the heart to push her towards the safety of the apothecary. Not yet, anyway.

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><p><strong>AN: I hope you enjoyed the second chapter! I honestly can't wait for when they get older and the story is less centered around their parents.**


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